A Thunderbolt from the sky..A thunderbolt that could make change.A Thunderbolt that will tear apart the black clouds of imperialism and communalism that had covered India.Yes change is inevitable..Change will Come..

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

The
first railway budget of this BJP-led NDA government is a cosmetic
exercise, high on rhetoric and low in substance. The emphasis had been
in high-sounding bullet trains and commercial freight corridors with no
budgetary calculations to back up. The entire emphasis is to attract
FDI and to undertake all further expansion and modernization through the
ignominious PPP route. The sub-text of the budget is designed to
impose greater burdens on the common people who need the railways the
most and who use it the most. Apart from the pre-budget hikes, which
bring in a revenue of Rs. 8,000 crores, this budget has linked the
future prices for travel with the fuel adjustment factor. This means
that with every increase in the price of fuel, the cost of travel will
automatically go up. Therefore, there will be a continuous increasing
burden on the people. Further, experience of FDI and PPP in other
infrastructure sectors like airports and seaports has shown how the
costs to the consumer have grown exponentially. This is now bound to
happen with the railways imposing further burdens on the people. Even
these calculations of PPP are completely unrealistic as the budget
itself informs that the last year’s target of Rs. 6,000 crore through
the PPP route has not been realised. The budget, therefore, is a
blueprint for the privatization of Indian railways at the cost of the
Indian people who will bear the brunt of the profit maximization by the
private sector and FDI. As a result, the social responsibility
of the Indian Railways, of catering to the common people and making
backward areas accessible is being given the go-by.

Far from
addressing the question of improving the health of the Indian Railways,
the budget has shown that the operating ratio is now 95 per cent, i.e.,
95 out of every 100 rupees earned is being spent. This has come down by
2.7 per cent from an earlier operating ratio of around 90 per cent. In
spite of this, the Railway Minister has announced that the market
borrowing will be lower despite the target of internal resource
generation being short by over Rs. 2,000 crores.

Though the
Railway Minister mentioned that of the 99 new projects sanctioned during
the last decade, only one has been completed, he failed to inform any
roadmap for many of the important new projects that were designed to
perform the most important role of the Indian Railways in discharging
its social responsibility towards the country and the people. Clearly,
the future expansion of the railways has been halted. Though
there has been a lot of talk on improving the safety standards, nothing
substantial has been suggested. Further, there is no indication that
the close to 3 lakh vacant posts, mainly concerning the maintenance of
safety standards, will be filled. In sum, it is clear that this
government is relying entirely on attracting FDI in the railways and
large-scale privatization rather than discharging the government’s
responsibility towards improving the health of the Indian Railways so
vital to our economy and the people. The net result would be
increasing burdens on the people and the unfortunate further lowering of
the safety standards.